Emulator detection

[Prodatron]

...it was just a thought to shorten things. I'm coding a small "filemanager" for the CPC which should do things in the same way like the Midnight-Commander (show directory entries, copy, move, etc.) for FAT32 Harddiscs attached on Symbiface or X-Mass (...uses the &FD0x ports).

Have been away for 2 weeks, and now I see this 


Wow, this is looking pretty cool and promising!

If you are supporting existing FAT partitions you don't need the IDE identify command, as you have to read the MBR and boot sector anyway to get all information about the location of the partition and the FAT parameters. The identify command is only needed for own formatting routines and/or own file system implementations like BonnyDOS.
WinApe supports the following bits of the status register (#FD0F):
bit 0 - error
bit 3 - data request
bit 7 - ready
Which is all you need for reading/writing sectors. The others are not required for modern IDE devices anymore (at least for these not older than 15 years ).

[TFM]

You are wrong there, bit 6 is required and missing in WinApe! See here:

[Prodatron]

Interesting, I am wrong. That's probably the reason, why the IDE/FAT routines are running fine since 11 years on the CPC and 9 years on the MSX with all kind of *REAL* IDE devices as well  (WinApe support came 1,5 years later, it's not related to its emulation at all, btw)

[TFM]

Interesting, I am wrong. That's probably the reason, why the IDE/FAT routines are running fine since 11 years on the CPC and 9 years on the MSX with all kind of *REAL* IDE devices as well  (WinApe support came 1,5 years later, it's not related to its emulation at all, btw)

Oh, I'm sorry. Of course you're smarter than the T13 council... Oh wait.... I guess the CPC is just so slow that this bit doesn't have to be used. But its bad practice - no wonder that you stuff has problems with the X-MASS. 

[Prodatron]

Oh dear... 
The X-MASS issue of the SymbOS IDE driver has been fixed about half a year ago and had nothing to do with this redundant status-bit.

[TFM]

Glad to hear it, but this bit is not redundant. Good nite!